


we are nothing more than recycled stardust and borrowed energy

by mjonesing (klassmartin)



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Aging, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Childhood Friends, Discussions of Fertility Problems, F/M, Grab the tissues and buckle in, Marriage, Oh yes there shall be heartbreak, Peter and MJ deserve a good life, There are a lot of things that won't be tagged because of technicalities, There's a lot in this fic so I've forgotten what else needs tagging, What do you get the fandom heartbreaker for her birthday? Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klassmartin/pseuds/mjonesing
Summary: "Hello. Are you lost?"She blinks, her eyes the most intriguing shade of black. "Hello. No, I am quite well, thank you."He sits beside her in the path between the plants, ignoring the sudden dampness of his pyjamas. She ducks her head and hides her tears in the rain drops."What are you doing?" he asks."I'm waiting," she replies, turning back to the moon."For what?""To go home."Peter knows each of the twenty-three families that live in his little community. He also knows every child from the larger town he lives on the cusp of. Her home, wherever that may be, is not here.---Or: A tale of the different kinds of love found (and lost) beneath the stars.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 57
Kudos: 66





	we are nothing more than recycled stardust and borrowed energy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ForASecondThereWedWon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/gifts).



> A FIC FOR YOU... ON YOUR BIRTHDAY?!
> 
> Happy birthday Second! It should be known, before you read this, that I went into this expecting a little story inspired by a song and it was going to be 5k max. Cut to a few weeks later and... Here we are. I also went into this with the sole purpose of hurting you, because you've broken my heart like six times in the last week, nevermind since I joined the fandom. So I wanted to break your heart back, but in a nice way, and then this monstrosity was born.
> 
> On an important note! There is a PLAYLIST to accompany this fic, and is even ordered to theoretically tell the story as you go. I don't know how to link things in the notes, so if you're interested in it, check my tumblr (@mjonesing) for the link that is attached to the post - also featuring a moodboard! (I really went all out on this fic, guys. Nobody stopped me so I lost control.)
> 
> The biggest of thank yous to @spidermanhomecomeme and @jmsjssc who read this over and provided me with very detailed feedback that mostly consisted of them screaming that they hate me. 
> 
> The song that first inspired this is Spaceships by Kesha, which is included in the playlist for your pleasure.
> 
> Okay, on with the fic! Apologies in advance. You'll understand why later.

_"We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names."_

— Nikita Gill

He is woken by the cries of the innocent.

The window is small but he can pull himself onto the dresser easily enough. Outside, the birds have yet to start their morning song that usually rouses him. The full moon glows over the fields beyond his little house, the sweet beginnings of the summer lavender swaying in a gentle breeze, tickling the lowest leaves of the old oak tree at its centre.

Beneath it sits a girl.

Peter is only almost eight years old, but he is a very grown up almost eight year old, his Aunt always tells him. So he is not scared when he pulls on his coat and rain boots, and he is not scared when he drags his Uncle's jacket the whole one hundred and fifty-two paces it takes to reach her, and he is not scared when he hears her singing in a tongue that is unlike anything he's ever heard.

The girl sparkles with the midnight rain. She does not appear to be cold, despite the delicate green fabric that flows around her frame. He gives her the jacket anyway, and when she continues to stare, he wraps it around her shoulders, just like his Mom used to do for him.

"Hello. Are you lost?"

She blinks, her eyes the most intriguing shade of black. "Hello. No, I am quite well, thank you."

He sits beside her in the path between the plants, ignoring the sudden dampness of his pyjamas. She ducks her head and hides her tears in the rain drops.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm waiting," she replies, turning back to the moon.

"For what?"

"To go home."

Peter knows each of the twenty-three families that live in his little community. He also knows every child from the larger town he lives on the cusp of. Her home, wherever that may be, is not here.

"Did you get left behind?"

"That would imply I am alone."

"But there is no one else here."

She points up to the night. "The stars are here. They will keep me safe until I can return to my home."

Peter tucks his cold hands into his lap and settles into the damp soil. "If that is true, I should like to keep you company, also."

"I do not require your help, little boy." She brushes some of her curly hair back behind her ear. "Do you think me too weak to fend for myself?"

"Having a friend by your side is not a weakness."

This captures her attention enough to look his way. "You are not my friend. I do not even know your name."

"I am Peter. There, now we are friends."

Her mouth twitches into a smile, hidden as she once more watches the sky. "Very well, you may stay. But I warn you, it shall not be long now."

***

The stars fade from view, but her spirit does not.

His Aunt feeds them a sunrise breakfast of buttered toast and sweet apples from the orchard. The girl does not say much despite the adults’ various questions, just tugs at the curls that frame her face until they’re broken apart into a mess of individual strands; so he fills the silence with interesting things he learnt at school - something he is surprised to see her so intrigued by, even as her gaze remains on the half-finished food in front of her.

Later, she falls asleep in his Uncle's armchair, pushed close to the window to keep watch. Aunt May sends Peter to bed with a look that says, _we will discuss this later._

He wakes up to see the girl peering down at him, a crease between her brows. In the heat of the midday sun, he can see he was mistaken earlier; her eyes are not black but rather the strangest shade of violet; dark and deep and magnificent, swirling with complexities his young mind cannot begin to comprehend.

"Your father sent me to fetch you for something he called 'chores'," she says.

"Uncle Ben is not my father."

"Oh." She straightens up and smooths her hands over the clothes she has borrowed from him. The trousers fall just shy of her ankles, the shirt loose around her shoulders. "Will you show me what chores are? I have some time before the stars can be seen again."

***

"Tonight," she assures his Aunt when May tries to send them both to bed.

Uncle Ben touches his wife's shoulder and fetches a whole heap of blankets from the barn, and the three of them make camp beneath the tree. In the picnic basket sits a pitcher of his Aunt’s best lemonade and a fresh batch of cookies. Neither last long between the two children and Uncle Ben’s sweet tooth.

Minutes trickle into hours, and nothing much changes in the sky. When she is not singing that strange little tune, Uncle Ben tells them stories of his boyhood adventures to pass the time, and the girl listens just as keenly as she watches the stars.

Aunt May arrives with the sun. They are ushered inside and both fall asleep in front of the fire.

For three more nights, they befriend the night.

As the first week ticks over into two, the girl slumps beside him and whispers, "My name is Michelle."

And that is the beginning of the time that Michelle came to stay.

***

No one comes forth to claim the little girl with impossible eyes, so with the beginnings of fall, Michelle is enrolled at Peter's school and states her current address as Parker Farm. 

Their classmates are cruel. Michelle does not take kindly to their ugly behaviour.

She is sent home during the first week for punching a boy right on the nose. Peter beams proudly when they examine the cracked skin of her knuckles that evening. Aunt May scolds her but, curiously, does not send her to bed without supper; a fate Peter has been resigned to more than a few times.

Michelle settles quickly into the routine of the little farm, helping Uncle Ben with whatever she can after her homework is done. When she’s not helping out, she shows an increasing interest in spending as much time at his side as possible. Peter doesn’t mind this development, having never really had a genuine friend before. This perhaps makes him more pliable to her many whims; twisting wildflowers into his hair is a favourite, as well as playing hide-and-seek around the orchard, despite her insistence to always hide in the same three places. Every time he tries to encourage her to find another spot, Michelle just laughs in that way that makes her eyes crinkle and shows off all her teeth.

Peter always gives in when that happens. Her laugh is a beautiful melody he strives to hear whenever possible.

As the days draw to a close, they sit amongst the branches of the old oak tree and dream of a life beyond the confines of their small town. She finds his wilder fantasies pleasant but amusing. Her planned adventures always involve the strangest sights, things he does not understand but he so desperately wants to, or the little things that a boy from this world takes for granted. 

He decides very quickly that Michelle is his second favourite person in the whole world; with his Aunt and Uncle tied for first place, of course.

Being her friend is like waking up to a crisp layer of white snow - he thinks, at least, as it never snows in their little town. She is gentle and hard all at the same time. She sings to the stars and the morning birds and hums softly to encourage the struggling plant buds to bloom. She’d rather go hungry than eat meat and yells at the neighbour’s teenage sons when they trample the crops as they cut through the field to reach the school.

There is something magical about his friend from the sky.

It is almost easy to forget that Michelle does not truly belong here. In fact, he would forget entirely if not for the quiet sobs he hears each night from the other side of his bedroom wall. Each time, he sneaks into her room and they watch the stars until the heaviness in their eyes can no longer be fought.

Michelle does not talk about what she waits for or the place she once lived. Those memories are locked away inside her mind, inaccessible even to him.

***

Aunt May dotes on Michelle like a daughter, so taken by her that Peter is almost jealous before remembering hearing his mother discuss her sister-in-law’s desire for a little girl of her own. She makes her little dresses that Michelle says she hates but, secretly, Peter is sure she loves, based on the way she grins whenever the skirt hem tickles her calves on the walk to school.

Uncle Ben’s love is quieter than his wife’s, but also a little more extravagant; Peter’s favourite demonstration of this is Uncle Ben’s completely inability to walk by the local confectionery shop without coming home with three bags full of penny sweets that sends the two children into a chaotic flurry of sugar-induced speed and comedic timing.

He is also the first person to present Michelle with her very own book at the end of the year, a gift that overwhelms her until all she can do is repay him with a firm embrace.

***

Peter turns nine years old at the height of summer. 

He spends the day at the stream with Michelle and the new boy who has moved into the flour mill two fields over, who does not pull at Michelle's messy braids but instead asks how she made her eyes quite so purple - he suspects it has something to do with the lavender blooms. She seems to find this question most interesting, and by extension, Ned, so Peter decides he will be their friend.

"Do you have a birthday?" Ned asks her as they paddle their bare feet in the cool water.

It is not a question that has ever occurred to Peter.

When Michelle shrugs, Peter declares, "You can share with me, if you like."

It is a tough sell, but she eventually agrees. 

For their tenth birthday, they eat apple pie in the lavender field. For their eleventh, Ned brings over the boat he has built with his father and they sail it on Thompson Lake. In the early evening of their twelfth, Michelle holds his hand and sings to the setting sun, a song quite like the one he hears each night for the moon, with strange syllables and a curling tongue and a mourning for a world she cannot return to.

On their thirteenth birthday, after Ned returns home, Michelle drags him to the old oak tree and they lie beneath the stars. Aunt May has left the porch light on but knows they will not return until the sun rises. Tonight there is a full moon, and it is on those nights that the pair watch the sky. 

“What happens to us if they return tonight?” Peter whispers to the wind, oddly melancholic for a day bursting with celebration.

“Nothing at all. We are friends, always; isn’t that true?” She rolls to her side, head propped on her hand as she looks at him. The possibility of them not always being friends seems to disturb her almost as much as it disturbs him. What is he to do when he has to exist without her?

“But you will go.” It is not a question he wants the answer to, so he does not ask it. Michelle nods anyway, curly hair rustling around her face.

“I must return home sometime, Peter.” Her voice is heavy, something he doesn’t understand clinging to the edges. He keeps his eyes on the brightest star, cheeks warm with her continued gaze but his chest cold with something too profound.

She lies back, smoothing a hand over the worn fabric of her shirt. He takes a deep breath and rests his palm just shy of her own.

“Is Parker Farm not your home, now?”

She is quiet for a long time. “It is not my forever home. But a home all the same.”

Her fingers dance across his wrist and fall into the space between his. Heart beating like a hummingbird, Peter hopes she can not tell how clammy his palms have just become.

“Would you like to hear about my home?"

Peter holds his breath as he nods eagerly. She squeezes his hand and does not let go.

Michelle talks for a long time about far-off lands painted in tones of sapphire and magenta and the deepest emerald until his eyes drift closed. His dreams are full of skies with many moons, a glittering city and a dazzling horizon where their rickety little farmhouse sits pride of place. There are trees the colour of candy floss and a river of Aunt May’s lemonade. And always, smiling at his side, is Michelle.

He wakes the next morning to her head on his shoulder, even breaths tickling his skin. She is soft and warm against him and a hand rests upon the rise and fall of his chest.

Above them stands Uncle Ben, who looks down on them with something warm and wise in his crinkling eyes.

“What is it, Uncle Ben?” he asks as he rubs the last dregs of sleep away.

“Nothing yet.” The older man sets down the pail and lifts his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

***

Peter and Ned crouch down at the edge of the stream, watching the tadpoles emerge from their eggs. It is a rare moment alone for the pair, as Michelle was once again sent home from school and, as punishment, has been tasked with hosing the old horse cart down in time for the summer fair. While they’re sad to be without her, Peter is secretly thrilled to have dodged a job that is usually reserved for him.

“Do you really think it’s true?” Ned asks into an extended moment of silence as the second tadpole begins to break free. His voice is mumbled, casual, like he’d just spoken aloud a thought as it passed through his mind. “Is Michelle really from the stars?"

“It has been eight years; do you still not believe?” Peter bites his tongue against the truth, knowing that some secrets cannot be shared, even with your best friend. “All I know is that someone like Michelle cannot be of this world.”

“Because you think she’s pretty?” Ned bumps him with his shoulder and chuckles quietly.

“Michelle is not _just_ pretty,” is all Peter can manage to say, at a loss for the adjectives that can fully explain his incomplete and expanding thoughts. “I’m sure you understand.”

“I don’t think I do.”

Peter sits up a little in surprise. “You do not think Michelle is pretty?”

Ned shrugs, long hair falling into his eyes. “Sure I do… Just not in the way you do.”

“Oh.” Peter frowns and returns his gaze to the water’s edge. “Who do _you_ think is pretty, then?”

“Lots of people.” Ned lights up and Peter smiles at the flush that colours his cheeks. “Have you seen the new girl? The principal’s daughter? She is very captivating.”

“Don’t let Mrs Bryant hear you speak like that! Eugene says she is really strict.”

“He only says that because she dislikes him. Can you blame her?”

“I suppose not.” Peter slumps further down, his fingers slipping in the mud. “Still. I think that is why Michelle has been in so much trouble recently.”

“Well if she stopped interrupting class to ‘correct’ the teacher, she would probably be less on Mrs Bryant’s radar.”

“Perhaps the teachers just need to be smarter.” Peter points to the latest tadpole. “Did you see that? It’s learning to swim!”

Ned leans closer to see what Peter is looking at, both boys breathing out a noise of awe as one by one, the tadpole’s brothers and sisters join in. There is something so beautiful about new life; the potential of a life not yet limited by circumstance or regrets, with a million things they’ve yet to learn but their brains already knowing to figure it out.

The quiet moment is interrupted quite suddenly by a sound that slips down his spine like the sharp icicles he finds hanging from the door frames each winter.

"Peter! _Peter!_ "

The pair scramble from their perches to stand upright. Ned is the first to spot her, drenched and wild with lacquer painting her hands and cheeks. She runs through the wildflowers with a desperation that holds him fiercely to the spot. He has never seen her run if not with glee as the boys chase her through the playground. 

"Peter! Please, come quickly!" When she sees them she does an abrupt turn, heading straight back the way she'd come. She sounds strange - not just out of breath but something else that won’t register - "We have to go, this instant!"

"Michelle? What's wrong?" Ned grabs him by the sleeve and _tugs_ , dragging him along until Peter has recovered feeling in his legs.

He has realised, to his horror, that Michelle is not covered in lacquer as he first thought.

"It's Uncle Ben. _Please_ , you have to hurry!"

***

They bury Uncle Ben on the hottest day of the year with every person from the closest three towns in attendance.

After, the crowds gather in the yard of Parker Farm. Peter watches from the highest perch of the oak tree. Up amongst the leaves, shed of the stiff jacket that’s a little too big for his still-growing body, people cannot pat him on the shoulder and offer empty apologies. They can't offer weak advice on how Peter needs to be the man of the house, now. They cannot tell him what he already knows; that his Uncle Ben was a good man; a kind man; a man taken too soon.

Ned has just made it back to the gathering after keeping vigil at his friend's side since the first notes of the organ, finally shunned away by Peter's hollow chest. His dry eyes track the curling path Ned takes to find Aunt May, excusing her from a stilted conversation with his parents to lead her inside for a much needed break.

He should be the one helping his Aunt, he knows. He just doesn't know how.

Michelle has taken on the role of hostess, accepting food and condolences and rushing between the people with cool cider pitchers. She never stops moving, righting crooked frames on the wall in between her trips to the kitchen, fiddling with floral arrangements as she listens to the townsfolk’s favourite stories involving Uncle Ben. The farm remains perfectly tidy and full of subdued humour as they celebrate the life of a lost friend, and it is all down to a fourteen year old girl who is trying to ease the suffering of the last remaining Parkers.

She is heartbroken, too. Peter knows this from the sobs that echo through the thin wall between their beds, the ones that make him creep down the hall like when they were children. Too many times he has found her hunched over the sink, scrubbing at her palms until the skin is raw and broken. 

Sometimes he forgets that, while she has lost her family, she has never lost someone quite so permanently before. Peter has experience with death - can greet grief like an old friend - but Michelle has never known the feeling of having a part of your heart snatched from your grip, never to return.

She puts on a brave face for him but Uncle Ben was her family too. It slips his mind too often, so consumed by his own anguish and heartache.

The wind shakes the branches around him but he just holds on tighter, knowing the old oak tree will stay steady beneath him.

Peter does not know what to do with all this pain in his chest. If he moves, even just a little, he fears it will consume him, burning through him like the fires that claimed half of Main Street nearly eight years prior. 

Uncle Ben had been one of the first on the scene, diving fearlessly into the flames to find Gwen before it was too late. Peter does not know how to be brave like that. He had listened to the tale when Uncle Ben was finished having his arm wrapped by Dr. Moon, Aunt May cleaning the soot from his skin with pinched lips. How could he throw himself into danger like that when everyone was so sure the girl had perished?

The answer is simple - because that is just how his Uncle Ben is. 

Was. 

How his Uncle Ben _was_.

He’s only fourteen. He still had so much to learn from his Uncle - like that fancy knot he used for his ties, or the Parker apple pie recipe that Aunt May never got quite right but that he could whip up with his eyes closed. Peter has so many big life decisions to make in the next few years, and Uncle Ben should be here to tell him how to approach them. Who will he become without the constant guidance that he so desperately relies on?

As the sun kisses the horizon, the last person leaves. The little family is finally alone in their grief.

In the rocking chair on the porch, Aunt May stares out into the distance. Peter finds his courage in the untouched leftovers sitting beside her, realising what he thought he already knew: that she needs someone. Peter can never be what she needs, but he will try, for they are all the other has left.

At Aunt May’s feet sits Michelle, singing her sombre song for the first twinkle of the stars as she curls her fingers into the dark fabric of her skirt. Thick blankets cover the two of them but Peter drags another from the cupboard to wrap around Aunt May's shoulders. He can only hope she understands the silent apology in his gesture. 

She doesn't react, doesn't move a muscle; just watches the sky.

"There!" whispers Michelle, pointing high above them. "That's a new one."

Aunt May smiles for the first time since the accident, and it makes Peter buckle at the knees. He presses a kiss to her cheek and she takes his hand as tears begin to slip from her wide eyes, watching the brand new star that shines over their family.

They will be okay; the Parkers will continue. They have to. If not for Uncle Ben, then for themselves.

***

The following Spring is the hottest on record, but in the middle of April there comes a storm so wild, so strong, that Peter will spend the night trying to collect the few animals they have into the barn, where Michelle will sing softly to keep them calm through the screaming of the thunder as Aunt May holds the doors closed with sheer force of will.

But before all of that, as the first hints of a downpour splatter on the hard, dry ground of the yard, they enjoy the end of the drought together.

Aunt May lifts her skirts to stamp her bare feet in the puddles, and Peter whoops for joy as he holds out his tongue to taste the downpour.

And Michelle, dressed in his trousers that are always too short and an old mud-stained shirt of Uncle Ben’s, spins and twirls and dances in the space between the raindrops.

It is the moment he perhaps understands what his Uncle Ben had seen two summers ago, what Ned had hinted to before that day at the stream turned so very awful - because Peter realises something brand new and familiar all at once.

Michelle is his very best friend, but so is Ned, and Peter doesn’t feel quite the same way for the two.

He tells Aunt May this as she settles into the rocking chair a few nights later, eyes fixed on the soft oranges of the remaining sunset.

“Now you’re starting to get it,” is all she says, patting his hand and sharing a knowing look with the stars that are beginning to appear.

Peter does not, but then Michelle steps outside and stretches up onto her toes, her nose buried in one of the books Cindy has lent her from her father’s library, and Peter forgets quite what he was supposed to be figuring out. 

Ned laughs when Peter whispers about his confusion at the end of classes, the two boys waiting for their friend outside the main entrance so they can begin the three mile walk home.

“You’re only just realising this now?” Ned wheezes between bouts of laughter. “I’ve known this about you since I moved here; since we were children! Did you really not know for all this time?”

Peter opens his mouth in indignation, ready to refute such claims of his stupidity, except at that moment Michelle walks around the corner clutching a paper bag tight to her chest, something so troubled to her expression that Peter forgets to be cross with Ned as they share a tense walk home.

Peter is exhausted that evening after completing the majority of the work on the farm, Aunt May and Michelle nowhere to be seen. He slumps back against the trunk of the old oak tree and tilts his hat down over his eyes to block the dwindling sun’s rays. 

A nap, he’s sure, will brighten his mood before dinner.

“Peter?”

Her voice is uncharacteristically nervous, and Peter straightens only to be immediately grateful he is still seated, for surely this sight would have knocked him straight off his feet.

Michelle stands before him in not just a dress, but _the_ dress - a shimmering emerald that once draped over her young frame but now clings to the gentle curve of her hips, falling just below her knees. To allow for her growth over the years, sections of the fabric have been rather crudely stitched together with sections of clothes he knows from over the years - a shirt from when he was a boy, a skirt Aunt May tore on a fence but had never gotten around to mending, even the cuff of Uncle Ben’s best shirt. It is a patchworked mess of their little family but she looks radiant, extraordinary, a hesitant smile twitching at her lips as she wrings her hands together.

“Do you like it?” Michelle exhales, shaking out her loose curls so they fall down her back. “We had this project at school and -“

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Peter flushes hot and deep and Michelle’s shoulders relax, her smile growing as Peter finally stumbles to his feet.

“Was that a yes?” she teases. Peter nods dumbly and takes a hesitant step towards her, his hand reaching out to stroke the silky fabric that falls over her waist.

“I didn’t know you still had this,” he confesses as he watches his fingers move.

“Of course.” She shivers when his thumb grazes over her ribs and he looks back to her face to see something smouldering in her violet eyes. “It was my last piece of home. Now it is all the pieces of home.”

Peter is overcome with the desire to pull her close and press his lips to hers for the first time, but from the corner of his eye he can see Aunt May loitering on the porch, so he withdraws his hand only to find it immediately laced with her own.

“I thought I could wear it to the school dance next month.” Michelle’s voice is soft like butter but trembles, like the nerves that twitch in the hand not attached to her. “Maybe we could go… Together?”

“I’m not sure Mrs Bryant will let you - this breaks almost every dress code rule that’s ever existed.” He smiles but Michelle just squeezes his hand, still very much serious.

“I don’t much care what anyone else thinks. Unless it’s you.”

Peter’s smile grows to a grin. “I would like very much to go to the dance with you.”

“Good.” Michelle nods and finally inhales. “That’s… Good.”

***

Aunt May ends up making a few last minute adjustments to the dress, but Michelle still glows as they walk into the hall arm in arm. Her hair is pinned up and there’s rouge on her cheeks that she does not need, for every time she catches Peter looking at her she blushes and holds his hand a little tighter.

They dance and drink sweet punch made by the Thompson’s, and Peter laughs at every glare Michelle fixes their peers with who dare to laugh at her otherworldly moves. 

It has been eight years but Michelle has never quite been accepted by those around them. Not once has she bothered to earn it, content with what she has, which is one of the things Peter admires most about her while also finding it infinitely perplexing. Most have been won over by her natural charm and kind spirit, but the few that disapprove of the mysterious girl with violet eyes never seem to be far from sight. 

Hopefully, despite her indifference, she knows they are not in the majority.

Ned twirls past them and they laugh at the firm watch Mrs Bryant keeps on her daughter as Betty squeals with excitement. Eugene bumps into Peter’s shoulder and pats it as an apology, his gaze flickering to Michelle, twitching his nose like he can still feel the echo of pain from her fist breaking the bone all those years ago.

As they walk home, her arm looped with his, Peter is transfixed by her wide smile as she recounts the smoke that poured from Mrs Bryant’s ears when Betty kissed Ned sweetly on the corner of his mouth before being dragged outside and sent home. He’d been watching from beside her, of course, but to hear her recount it thrills him in a way he can’t explain. He would listen to Michelle talk about anything at all if it meant she was talking to him.

Peter thinks of the books that Michelle reads to him as he picks apples from the orchard, full of facts and opinions that dazzle her and mold her into the smart, incredible woman she is becoming before his eyes. There is one - a journal from Dr. Moon who Michelle helps out on Saturdays - that Michelle has interpreted to mean only one thing; a fact she enjoys more than anything as she whispers it to him every night beneath the night sky.

People are made of 93% stardust, she tells him. “Isn’t that wonderful?” she always sighs longingly.

Secretly, Peter thinks Michelle is at least 96%.

She presses a quick kiss to his cheek when he walks her to her bedroom door, and Peter wonders if she is actually a gift from those stars she sings so softly to; a gift he is endlessly grateful for, for Michelle is everything he never knew he needed, shining and golden like the Sun, warming and mending his very soul just by being near her.

***

They are seventeen and it has been ten years since he found her. 

Much has changed since, like the length of both their hair - hers brushing her lower back in the soft braid Aunt May pulls it into each morning, his cropped short to accommodate the hot summer sun - and the sudden shyness they exhibit as they teeter on the edge of _something_.

But on nights like this, where it is just the two of them beneath the stars like that very first night, Peter can only think of what remains the same. How she shivers with each whisper of the wind, or the curve of her neck as she looks up, or the wonder that fills her face under the pale moonlight. Michelle has blossomed into a beautiful woman with an incredible mind, but he can still look at her and see the girl that captured his very soul a decade before with nothing more than a quirked eyebrow and a shrug of her shoulders.

They sit beneath the very same tree and watch the night sky. It is quiet, unusual for them but not uncomfortable. A tear had slid down Michelle’s cheek an hour before and he had wrapped an arm around her, let her hide the ones that followed in the fabric of his shirt as she lent into his shoulder. His sleeve is dry now but Michelle still lingers. He wonders if she can hear the way his heart has not stopped loudly beating her name since she first shuffled towards him.

She sings her star song and Peter holds her tighter, no longer looking up.

When the black turns to splashes of red and pink and blue, she leans in close and he kisses her. She tastes like the excitement of a shooting star and the force of a meteor. It is perhaps the shortest but most incredible moment of his life, rivalled only by the next when she smiles and he gets to taste that too.

***

Aunt May just rolls her wise old eyes when he gushes about it the next day. He is not sure which of the women in his life taught the other this gesture, but he is too happy to care.

Michelle kisses him again after she returns from the doctor’s house the following Saturday, then a third time on Sunday morning, her lips lingering as they sway to their own beat on the porch.

On the night of their eighteenth birthday a few weeks later, he proudly declares her the new owner of his heart. She teases him mercilessly but it is between a shower of kisses over every inch of his face.

***

The sun is too hot to do anything but lounge beneath their tree, so he practises braiding long strands of grass and she reads aloud from her latest novel until she takes a pause, his gaze flickering away from his fruitless task to take in her thoughtful expression. She cards her fingers into his dark hair and he settles into the new silence, knowing she will tell him when she is good and ready.

"I think one day I would like to marry you," she finally says as he begins to fight a losing battle with sleep, so very comfortable with her lap as his pillow.

"I think I would marry you tomorrow."

They are young and foolishly in love, but Peter does not marry her until they are twenty one. He promises to be by her side for the rest of time beneath the stars she so adores, in the spot they first met, and her violet eyes shine in the moonlight as she vows to love him forever more.

Ned sobs as he throws dried lavender buds into the air. Aunt May cries as she winks at the sky. And Peter kisses his new wife with everything he has, a thrill dancing from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes as she calls him husband for the very first time. 

His hands slide across the emerald fabric of her dress as he holds her close, their smiles pressed together. The stars seem to shine a little brighter for them, the moon full and impossibly large. It is a perfect moment, one that stretches into hours as the newlyweds dance to a brand new song of Michelle’s own design.

Tomorrow there will be a street party for all the town, but tonight is just for them.

Peter and Michelle Parker - exactly as it was before yet ever so slightly different, like the world is now tinged in shades of gold and purple that match the colour of her eyes as he carries her across the threshold, laying her down on a bed that now belongs to the both of them.

Her gleeful laughter turns to breathless moans and then all he can see is the magic swirling beneath her skin, losing himself in the feeling of two becoming one.

***

It has been a long day and Michelle and Peter curl up eagerly in the sheets of their bed. His hands trace lazily over her skin and she is content in giving her sleepy little kisses that make him dizzy and delirious. They have been married a little over two years, yet the excitement of being with Michelle is yet to fade. He is certain it never will.

He notices the pause in her actions immediately, tearing his eyes away from the sight of his fingers drifting up her thigh to catch the crease of something out of place that she fights to subdue.

“Michelle?”

She taps out a strange rhythm against his chest and leans in to join their lips once more, only to retract from his hold completely just a moment later. Her eyes fall to the almost full moon that glows through the open window.

“My love? What is it?”

Michelle tears her gaze away after a long moment and presses herself ever closer, her hand sliding down his chest enticingly. “It is nothing. Nothing at all.”

And then Michelle kisses across his jaw and whispers lustfully into his ear, and Peter falls in love all over again.

***

Peter officially takes over the farm after he notices the tremble in Aunt May’s hand that cannot be steadied. Michelle studies under Dr. Moon until she begins to make house calls by herself. There is no official addition to her name - they cannot possibly afford the schooling - but he proudly calls her Dr. Parker every time she returns from helping a townsperson all the same.

Their town is small enough that she still has plenty of time to help around the farm, preferring to spend her days harvesting the lavender when the time is right, or growing the garden she needs for the salves and ointments she develops. Aunt May sighs and cleans the dirt from under her nails each night as Michelle jots down notes in the margins of the books she buys from the larger town to the west. Peter drops a kiss to Aunt May’s greying crown and tries to pretend he can’t see the effort it takes to control her curling fingers.

Michelle presses herself into his chest at night and he traces the hard bone of her ribs as they wrap around her vital organs, her heart beating in time with his as he tries to turn off the noise in his mind.

“Will you sing to me?” he asks, desperate and full of a sorrow for things yet to come.

“What would you like me to sing, my darling?”

“Anything. Everything.”

She does not begin right away. Instead, Michelle turns her head to press her lips over his quickening heart, then kisses up his throat, across his jaw, lingering at his mouth before draping her arms around his neck as her nose brushes against his. Her violet eyes fall closed as she begins to sing the song she created for them, the words foreign but their meaning clear.

He has asked many times over the years to learn the language she hides inside of herself, the requests dwindling as they aged and he took notice of the pain in her gaze whenever she gently turned him down. It is, perhaps, because it is the last thing she has left of her first home, something that has not been twisted or tainted by her life here on Earth. Grappling with that thought is both saddening and frustrating, knowing there is still a part of her he cannot reach. Soon, she will have been here for over two thirds of her life. How does she not yet understand that he will treasure that part of her, just like he does with the rest of her?

“Peter,” she whispers long after the song has finished, still so close to him as she smoothes her thumb over the wrinkle between his brow. “What are you thinking about?”

“You, my love. Always you.”

But Michelle does not smile or tut goodnaturedly as she always does. She sighs, her breath washing across his face, smelling of the lavender tea she sells at the market on Sunday afternoons.

“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.”

Peter does not get the chance to ask why, for Michelle is already turning in his arms until her back is nestled into his chest. She pulls his arms tighter around her, like it will mend the crack he can suddenly feel in the once perfect thing between them. 

***

They are fully grown adults now - have been for quite some time - but Ned and Peter and Michelle still like to take trips down the stream, paddling their feet in the cool water and wiping fruit juice from their chins as they enjoy the season’s bounty. The only difference is that Ned’s wife, the one and only Betty Bryant, joins them also.

Michelle has her ear pressed to Betty’s growing stomach, jaw slack as a tiny foot kicks against her cheek. Betty laughs loud and long as Michelle playfully scolds the baby before diving back down to listen once more.

“Have you two discussed it any further yet?” Ned asks from where he sits with Peter at the water’s edge, his smile fond as he watches the two women chatter excitedly further up the ridge.

“We agreed to let it happen,” Peter confesses, splashing a little too hard so that water seeps into the fabric bunched around his knees. “But it’s been five years, Ned. Surely if it were fated…”

“You and your crazy notions of fate,” Ned says with a shake of his head.

“It’s okay,” Peter continues as if he hadn’t spoken. “I have Michelle, and that is all I need.”

It is an absolute truth, but Ned must hear what goes unspoken, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as Peter watches the stream reflect back the clear blue sky above them.

***

Twenty years is a rather monumental anniversary to commemorate, in his opinion, so he gathers every candle he can find and lays out their favourite blanket for the traditional night under the stars.

Except right as he finishes setting up, watching the dirt track she’ll have to walk up after delivering the second Leeds’ baby, a swift wind brings the rain scheduled for the morning. Peter and the blanket are sodden, the candles all blown out, the fresh loaf barely saved inside the picnic basket. 

When Michelle finally arrives, so long after dark that Peter is inside washing the dishes, she takes in his dry clothes and damp hair with a fond look and points to her own drenched attire. “Give me a moment,” she requests.

He releases a breath and nods. By the time he’s finished drying the last of the crockery, she has her arms wrapped around his chest, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck.

They walk back to the old oak tree hand in hand, Michelle regaling him with all the tender moments of the arrival of their best friend’s second child; a daughter this time, with a shock of dark hair and deep blue eyes.

Peter climbs up into the branches of the tree with a practised ease, holding out his hand to help Michelle when she stumbles. They settle onto the branches they have always chosen since they were children; him the largest, hers the smoothest. She likes the comfort, whereas he prefers a sturdy foundation.

The branches are also close enough that she can hold his hand as she settles back against the trunk.

Michelle tucks into the rescued bread and Peter keeps his eyes on the sky that peeks through the leaves. The stars are mostly hidden by the clouds that still loom above them, but Michelle seems perfectly content anyway, quietly humming her star song as she chews.

Peter tries to bite his tongue, but cannot help the question that slips from his lips once more. “What happens to us if they return tonight?”

She answers so quickly that she must have already given it a lot of thought. "I would stay."

He almost tumbles from his perch in his haste to see the determined line of her mouth. "You would stay?” he echoes in disbelief. “For what?"

"For you, of course."

His heart shatters as he tugs his wife by the hand until she puts down her food, doing a double take at the way he looks at her in perplexity.

"My love, have you gone quite mad? You have spent so long looking up that I have feared for many years that you were stuck that way. Yet if you could finally go home, you would turn it away for me?"

“Peter,” she says in that way she always does when she thinks he is a fool, “I _love_ you. Why would I leave?”

“Because it is what you have been waiting for! I have known our entire lives that our time is short, Michelle. I have been preparing for it since I was seven years old." 

"Twenty Earth years have passed since my arrival; do you not think I could have left if I truly wanted to?” She squeezes his hand and her voice softens. “Do not think me _mad_ for wanting you, Peter; for choosing you. The day we got married, you promised to stay by my side for the rest of your days. I am simply helping you to keep that promise."

Michelle turns away as though the discussion is finished, but Peter’s mind keeps skipping over the _I could have left._ All this time watching the sky, and she is only now telling him she has had a way to leave all along? How has he known her this long - been married to her for so long - but never known? How could she never tell him so?

"You really think I would choose a life without you?" he says, choking on tears that threaten to overwhelm him.

Michelle sighs, brushing the crumbs from her fingers. "I think you would choose me without a second thought, but leaving behind everything else you hold dear will make you a bitter man. To witness the darkening of your soul would destroy me. I shan't do it."

And Michelle climbs out of the tree four hours too early, looking up at her dumbstruck husband when she reaches the ground. “I’m quite tired after the events of the day, and we have an early start tomorrow. Shall we go to bed, darling?”

***

It all plays on his mind for quite some time. That Peter Parker, a simple farmer from a small town in the middle of nothing, is the one string tying his strange, impossible wife to a world that is only home to her because he forced it to be. By waking that night to the sounds of her crying, by keeping her company and then begging his Aunt and Uncle to let her stay, he had bound her into a life she didn’t want because he was selfish; had craved a friend; had wanted to see her smile, perhaps more than he wanted to see her safe.

In all the years he has known her, he had settled any doubts with the thought that he had, in fact, _saved_ her that night, and that everything that came after it was a most-welcome but happy coincidence. But if, in actuality, he has trapped her here - then how can she possibly be so sure in her love for him? 

The thoughts torment him, distract him, twist any good moment they share into a mess of shame and sorrow. The cracks between them begin to feel like chasms, and Michelle takes to sleeping at Aunt May’s bedside, convincing nobody that it is because she’s watching for more symptoms, more possible answers as to her declining health.

They celebrate ten years of marriage apart; Michelle patching up the cuts of the drunks from the next town over, Peter telling Aunt May stories of Uncle Ben as she drifts off to sleep against his shoulder.

Uncle Ben would know how to fix things, he’s sure. Aunt May would not be sick if he were here, he would have talked Peter down from his growing panic and doubt before it ever began, and he would know just what to say to Michelle so she would smile just like she used to, before they began to drift apart, before things got complicated; hell, even before the accident that took the oldest Parker’s life.

It has been many years since Uncle Ben died, but Peter can still feel the gaping hole he has left behind, always following them, never changing, lingering in every moment.

Uncle Ben would know what to do, and Peter does not.

So he does nothing, even though he knows it only makes things worse.

***

Michelle climbs into bed in the early hours of the morning, waking him from his restless slumber to press her cold toes against his shins. She hides her puffy eyes in his chest, clinging to him as he melts into her touch.

“I miss you,” she eventually says against his skin.

“I’m right here.”

“No, you’re not.” She pulls back to take his face into her hands, the first hints of dawn casting her face in shadows that highlight the heartache in her gaze. “I don’t know where you are right now - where you’ve been for months now - but please, Peter. Please come back to me.”

“Michelle, I -”

“I don’t want you to leave me,” she says, voice thick with tears and desperation. “I lo- I _love_ you, Peter Parker. Is that not enough?”

“You are _more_ than enough.” He strokes her hair and kisses away the sorrow leaking onto her cheeks. “You are everything to me. Always have been, always will.”

“Then why are we like this?” she asks, but he can hear the true question; _Why are we broken?_

“Because I am not enough for you.” A sob rips from his chest as he finally puts it all into words. “You have become trapped in this life that you were not destined for, and yet you remain here, for reasons I do not understand but that you call love!”

Michelle rips herself from his arms in a fury he has never witnessed from any mere mortal, her feet slamming against the floor as she seethes. “How _dare_ you. Who is this selfish, self-righteous man in our bed, because he is _not_ my husband!”

He clambers to the foot of the bed, trying to take her hands in his. “Michelle -”

“Get your hands away from me!” She paces to the other side of the room, fingers tangled in her hair as she stumbles over words. “My destiny is my own to make, Peter - not yours, not some higher power - mine! I _choose_ to be here because I am happy here, because this is my home and my family. Unless… Maybe... I always thought it true, but maybe not, if you cannot see past this obsession. How has my worst fear come true? How have you become this?”

“Because my wife is impossible! Every time I think I know you, understand you - you prove me wrong, time and time again! I spent twenty years waiting for you to be ripped from my side, Michelle, and then you tell me you could have left whenever you so fancied? That I spent all that time on a knife’s edge for nothing? What was I supposed to do other than -”

Michelle cries out, flinching away from him as he steps closer. 

_“I lied!_ ”

Peter freezes mid stride, a fractured silence growing between them. “You… You lied?”

“I thought it would make things better,” she sobs into her hands as they wipe at her face before tugging at her hair. “You were always staring at the stars, waiting, asking questions and… You never seemed to understand that I’m _here_ . I kissed you, I _married_ you, we became each other’s everything and… You never realised that it didn’t matter if I could go home. I chose you anyway. I will _always_ choose you. So… I lied. I thought it would make you understand but I- I broke us, and I’m so sorry, Peter, truly -”

All the fight leaves him in one breath, falling onto the edge of the mattress. “You can’t… You can’t go home?”

“There is no home to go to, Peter, for _you_ are my home.” Michelle sighs, taking a seat beside him. “But… I do not know, honestly. I haven’t tried in a long time. I stopped feeling the need to.”

“Because… Because you chose me.” He reaches for her hands, hesitating at the last second until she closes the gap and holds on tight, thumb kneading at the calloused skin. “Oh, my love. I’m so very sorry. I have been a _fool_ for far too long.”

“Do not speak of my husband that way,” she chides, almost smiling, before sobering. “But yes, you have. Clearly, love has made fools of us both.”

“I can fix this,” he promises. “I will do better; _be_ better. I won’t lose you, Michelle.”

“You could never lose me, my darling.” Michelle strokes his cheek and leans in close, resting her forehead against his so all he can see is the shifting magic of her violet eyes. "I am quite certain that the stars led me here, to you; perhaps a little earlier than they first planned, but undoubtedly they knew where I was needed and where I needed to be. I have only seen the tiniest fraction of the universe, but I know, deep in my heart, there is no one else I'd rather be with. No other soul will love me the way you do."

“I do love you.” He leans in, punctuating each word with a kiss. “Stupidly, whole-heartedly, always.” Michelle smiles and he kisses that too. “I love you without beginning, without end. To the start of all of time and back. To every corner of space. I chose you, too, and I will choose you every day until the end of my days; even then, I do not think I will stop.”

Michelle chuckles, wrinkling her nose as he kisses the tip of it, sliding closer until she’s pressed against him.

“Your impossible wife.”

“Your foolish husband.”

His arms wrap around her waist but his hands quickly descend, delighted with the soft noise she makes into his ear.

“Won’t you make love to me, my darling?” she whispers.

And when has Peter been able to deny her anything?

***

There is a weight lifted off the household after their fight, and with it so do Aunt May’s spirits. She manages the walk to the porch unaided, greets visitors and maintains conversation for longer than they previously thought her capable. She even manages to cook a few meals, though Michelle flutters around her the whole time, fixing the heat of the flame and adding a pinch of salt when she’s not looking. She’d had to do this before Aunt May was sick - Uncle Ben had always been the chef of the family - though it required more effort then to be sneaky, whereas now she has to also catch a dropped wooden spoon or a precariously balanced plate every so often.

Michelle warns him against hope; that Aunt May will not recover from this particular sickness. But every time his thoughts drift to a possible time without her, he must quickly turn his attention to something that will consume him; like fixing the leak in the roof, or clearing the leaves from the orchard, or trying to show his wife how very, very sorry he still is for the troubles they strive to leave behind them.

Ned visits regularly with the children, who adore Aunt Michelle far more than they do their Uncle Peter. The young always seem transfixed by her eyes - Pippa in particular, squealing with joy as her tummy is tickled - and Michelle enjoys nothing quite as much as racing around the fields, chasing Henry’s delighted squeals, much the same way Ned and Peter had done to her in their youth. 

Betty is stuck at home, having been ordered to stay in bed until the end of her third pregnancy. Michelle sends Ned home with a basket of lavender tea and the best apples she’d been able to find - with her nephew’s help, of course. Henry is a natural at it, though he eats much of his bounty if left to his own devices for too long. 

“Think about it,” Ned says before he departs that evening, a screaming toddler on one hip and a tired child clinging to his leg.

And he does, long enough that a few months later, he makes the trip across the border with Michelle twitching nervously at his side. 

The building looms above them, with its heavy iron gates and imposing exterior. Michelle has a hat pulled as far down as possible, glancing around the busy streets of the city like a criminal on the run. Peter takes her hand in his to settle her nerves, assuring her that a denser population does not equate a greater threat. 

“Just because our town has accepted me does not mean everyone else will,” she mutters as they wait to be shown inside. “My eyes may be normal to you but I assure you, I remember the stares. I still feel them, when I travel out to the neighbouring towns.”

“Your eyes are beautiful,” he promises as he tucks a loose curl behind her ear. “Calm down, my love. Everything will be okay. I would never let anything happen to you.”

Michelle scoffs. “I think we both know that if it comes down to that, I’ll be a damn sight better at defending us than you.”

“Yet another thing I adore about you.”

“Thank you.” Her lips twitch into a half-smile. “For a fool, you do say the nicest things.”

The gate opens and the pair are led inside. Peter leans over to whisper, “I am _your_ fool.”

***

They come home from the pound with an Old English Sheepdog called Douglas, who follows Michelle around town or naps in Aunt May’s lap and contributes absolutely nothing else to the farm. 

Peter should have known, really. No one can resist the Parker women.

When Douglas is settled into his new home, Michelle comes home with a tabby cat that she calls Winston. He is the grumpiest cat known to man unless Douglas is around to curl up against.

After Winston comes Tina, the old cat from four fields over whose owner has just passed.

Peter walks across the yard one day to find Aunt May sleeping peacefully in her rocking chair, Tina curled in her lap, and on the dusty floorboards lies Michelle with Douglas as a pillow, Winston clutched to her chest as she scratches behind his ears.

“One day, we’ll find an animal who loves you just as much as I do,” his wife says later that night, trying not to laugh as Winston hisses when Peter tries to wrap his arm around Michelle.

Pippa and Henry adore the new members of the Parker household. Henry most enjoys chasing poor old Tina around the house, and Pippa is beginning to really find her feet now and keeps trying to use Douglas’ fur as leverage to keep her upright as she chases him. Ned finds this highly amusing, and Betty, finally able to walk about with baby number three cradled in her arms, doesn’t much care as long as she’s getting a moment’s peace.

“Nobody told me being a mother would be so stressful,” she complains as she tries to rock little Annabeth to sleep.

Michelle catches his eye and smiles, and after this long he hopes he interprets it correctly - that she is perfectly content with what they have, that she does not regret their inability to have children of their own. Her suspicions, she had told him once, is that while they are acutely similar in many ways, their core difference has meant they are incompatible - “There had to be something that could not manage!” she had laughed as he kissed hungrily down her chest - and while Peter has always been content with this, knowing as surely as he did before that he doesn’t need anything else but her, he has worried that somehow she did not quite share this feeling.

Michelle steps into his arms and searches out his lips with her own. “My darling, I could hear your brain from all the way over there.”

“What about now?” Peter kisses her sweetly, fingers slipping under the hem of his shirt that adorns her body. He raises his eyebrows suggestively when she narrows her gaze. 

“Peter!” she gasps, flicking him softly on the forehead. “We have guests!”

From behind them he hears Betty yelling, “Boo!” and Ned groaning, “Yes! We get it! You love each other!”

Michelle laughs against his lips, fingertips brushing over the wrinkles beginning to form around his eyes. “Wanna give them something to complain about?”

When she dips him, kissing down his throat dramatically until she nips playfully at his collarbone, he can barely make out the jeers from their audience over the pounding of his heart in his chest.

***

Beneath the stars and a full moon, Peter holds Michelle tight against his chest as she rests between his legs, her head leaning back against his shoulder so he can press feathersoft kisses to the wide expanse of skin he revealed by nudging away the neckline of her shirt.

Her skin tastes like apples after her day in the orchard, but something is holding Peter back from deepening his affections. Perhaps it is the openness of the field, or the way Michelle’s heartbeat skips in all the wrong places.

Unable to continue but too scared to stop, Peter becomes trapped in a limbo that his wife immediately understands.

“Do you feel it, too?” she whispers into the breeze.

Peter can not bring himself to acknowledge the brewing feeling in the air, like a storm is coming but the sky is clear.

So he tucks a finger beneath Michelle’s chin and kisses her deeply instead, hoping to forget his fears in the familiar dance of their lips.

***

Aunt May passes peacefully in her sleep a month before their fortieth birthday, sitting in her rocking chair beneath the stars.

Michelle points to the sky and does not need to say the words out loud. Even if she did, she does not seem capable. Tears that have not stopped falling for many hours drown out her voice.

While Uncle Ben’s funeral had been attended by many, Aunt May’s seems to attract a dazzling array of people from great distances away. It spills out of the yard and into the lavender field, and once again is taken care of by Michelle. Peter is many years older now and does not hide, but he spends much of his time at the gate, greeting guests and discussing the great many ways that Aunt May touched people’s lives. He drinks it up, absorbs it, lets it settle into his bones so that it might ease the pain that her passing has bought him.

It is an aching kind of pain; not better, just different. Is it worse to lose someone suddenly or to watch them slowly wither away? To watch the person you love become a shell of themselves, lost to the sands of time?

Michelle, perhaps, deals with Aunt May’s death a little worse. She cries a lot, cannot bring herself to sing any more to the sky she so adores. Sometimes she is so deep in thought that she does not hear his approach, or she makes herself so busy that more than once he finds her dozing upright, leaning on a spade or a fence.

It is the first time they are truly alone and Peter hates it. The farmhouse is too big for just the two of them - for so long they had complained about everyone being on top of one another, but now there seems to be too many empty rooms, too much space they cannot possibly fill with anything but their grief. 

Without Aunt May, Tina soon passes. Douglas trudges around the house on heavy paws, too old now to bound about the town with Michelle, so spends much of his time sleeping on the porch in the warmth of the sun, his faithful friend Winston always at his side.

Life is different, in a sad, silent sort of way. He can only remind himself to be grateful for what remains.

***

Michelle takes up knitting and Peter wears each of her terrible creations proudly as he strolls down Main Street. Betty puts up with this for two months before handing him responsibility of the children and snatching the needles from his wife’s hands.

“I can’t stand by any longer! No more purl stitches for you until you master the basics.”

Peter definitely does not laugh at this, mostly because Michelle fixes him with a glare that speaks to her horror at being taught by a Bryant once more.

***

When they turn forty-three, Michelle decides that this is the year to make up for never choosing to spend the day with anyone but each other.

Everyone from town comes. Most of the residents from the neighbouring towns also join.

Michelle is almost as loved by the people as she is by Peter, which she returns with fervour as she moves amongst the crowds, Peter helpless to the need to watch her, despite so long together. She still looks so young, even as she chats to some of the teenagers that help out at the Sunday markets. After thirty-five years, Peter has finally mastered the art of the braid, and Michelle’s hair swings down her back in two chunky sections tied with her best ribbon. It has maintained its colour well while Peter’s is more grey than it is brown, and Michelle can still jump out of bed while Peter has to roll and hope for the best.

“What do you think, my darling?” Michelle says as she sneaks up behind him, curling her arms around his ribs and up his chest as she rests her chin on his shoulder. “Do you like our first birthday party?”

“I do,” he admits begrudgingly, leaning back into her sturdy form. “I also like how we usually spend our birthday.”

“A little patience would do you some good. We can make love for as long as we like later, when the guests have gone.”

“I don’t think anyone would notice if we left now for a little while.” Peter twists to press his lips to her cheek, knocking his glasses from the bridge of his nose. Michelle rights them with a fond sigh. “Nor do I think they will blame us if they do notice.”

“Ned will definitely suspect something. He still does not believe it took two of us to finish preparing dessert at dinner last week.”

Peter snorts. “That’s because it was a terrible lie.”

“I was very distracted!” Michelle says with a careless shrug. “Besides, there are far too many children running around to be certain of a moment’s privacy.”

“A pity.”

“But later…” Michelle leans in close and kisses him chastely, far too quick a preview for the night’s plan, but then Betty is calling her over into a complex discussion with Cindy’s new partner and Peter is alone once more.

***

A lifetime of manual labour weakens Peter’s back until he gives in and hires Eugene Thompson’s eldest to help out around the farm. Slowing down is not something he ever wants to do, having watched his whole family work until the end, but then Michelle finds him rolling around the dusty floor of the barn as pain swells his knee and she puts her foot down. 

Worst still, she makes him use the crooked old cane from a Parker long forgotten.

Michelle still dances around the town like she’s a young woman, bouncing between her various jobs as effortlessly as she manages everything else in life. He’s as jealous as he is fond of his wife’s youthful exuberance, while he’s horrified to realise he’s becoming a grumpy old man just like his Grandpa, who scared the townsfolk so much with his sharp grumblings that even after he was long gone and Peter was just a baby, people would evade the farm unless strictly necessary. 

Ned finds this grumpiness about as hilarious as a best friend can when he’s stressed out of his mind with three teenage children. 

Which is to say, he slaps his knee and almost falls to the floor as the laughter ricochets through him. 

Peter does his best to bite his tongue and not yell at the newest generation, tries to remember how it felt to be so young and full of glee. The older he gets, the harder that is to manage. Was he so infuriating at that age? Did he and his friends really drive everyone up the wall with their silly little games?

“Yes,” Michelle says with an eye roll when he asks. 

Peter sighs and stops patrolling the fields when school lets out. When the crops continue to be trampled, he sends Michelle out with a broom and her best cross face.

No one cuts through the fields after that.

***

Keeping the family plot clean and tidy is a responsibility Peter takes very seriously, though this is mostly because he fears Aunt May would rise from her grave to chase him with a slipper should he leave them to fall into ruin.

It is on one such sunny day, as Peter clears the weeds from the gravestone of a great-grandparent he never met, that the thought occurs to him.

All of these generations, living a simple life in this little town, destined to live, love and die within its boundaries.

Peter looks down the row to the engravings that mark his late parents, to the curl and slender lines of Uncle Ben’s name, and there at the end, the stone still shiny and new as she rests beside her husband, lies dear Aunt May.

Only two more people remain to fill the last of the space; Michelle and himself, both already in the twilight of their lives.

Except Peter is not ready for this fate yet. There is plenty more he has to accomplish before then.

And Peter smiles, the idea shimmering and growing and solidifying in his mind.

***

“Do you remember, my love, how we had such big dreams as children?” 

Michelle lifts her head from his shoulder, tightening her grip around his chest as she relaxes in his lap. “Whatever do you mean?”

“We have been blessed with a good life, but it is not the life you envisioned; one of mystery and adventure.”

“We have lived a rather blessed adventure right here.” Michelle scratches her nails against his thinning scalp, fingers sweeping through the strands she trimmed this morning. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he confesses, tracing the curve of her jaw with his thumb, “Maybe it’s time for a new adventure.”

Her lips quirk up. “What did you have in mind?”

***

It is quite a sight to behold, to see a ship that sails the tide of the skies. 

It is quite another to see the person you love most in the world skipping through the sweet beginnings of the lavender, more happy than he's ever known her to be capable of. Michelle glances back once more to wave, wiping at her happy tears, until she takes a deep breath and disappears inside.

Ned grips his shoulder a little tighter. “I never doubted her, but…”

Peter just nods, unsure what words will fully express his awe at the sight.

“Are you sure about this?”

Turning at the emotional crack in his friend’s voice, Peter pulls him into a warm hug that he hopes conveys the depth of his respect and admiration for him. “The only thing I’ve ever been surer of is loving her.”

“I will miss you terribly,” Ned whispers into his shoulder. “I do not know how to live in this town without the two of you - no, actually, I do not know how to live without you both at all.”

“You will be just fine. You have a beautiful family to grow old with.” 

“We are already old!” Ned exclaims. “Fifty-two is older than my dear father ever managed.”

Peter withdraws and gives him a watery smile. “This is not goodbye, my friend. We will return.”

“You better. I won’t be able to keep an eye on this place forever.” Ned laughs. “Parker Farm without a Parker. The town will be horrified.”

“Don’t tell Uncle Ben,” Peter says through a chuckle, glancing up to the stars. 

Ned frowns suddenly, the serious edge to expression unusual for a man so often entering his next laugh before the last has even ended. “I hope you know, Peter, that being your friend… It has been the greatest honour of my life.”

“No one is luckier than I to have been blessed with your time and love.” Peter hugs him once more. “There is no one quite like you, Ned. You will be the thing I miss most; you are what makes leaving so incredibly difficult.”

“But go you must. There is great adventures that await you and Michelle, and the sooner you go, the sooner you will return to tell me of them.”

Peter grins, letting his grip loosen until the space between can be measured. “Oh, the stories I will have to tell you. I will have so many, I will have to write them down to remember them all!!”

Ned sighs. “It is time, my friend. You cannot wait any longer.”

Peter leans a little heavier on his cane, forcing his foot to take the first step. “Goodbye, Ned.”

“Goodbye, Peter. Until we meet again.”

* * *

He is woken by the cries of the innocent.

The window is small but he can pull himself up with the dresser easily enough. Outside, the birds have yet to start their morning song that usually rouses him. The full moon glows over the fields beyond his little house, the sweet beginnings of the summer lavender swaying in a gentle breeze, tickling the lowest leaves of the old oak tree at its centre.

Beneath it sits a girl.

Ned is almost seventy-eight years old, so he is not scared when he pulls on his coat and old rain boots, and he is not scared when he drags an old friend’s jacket the whole one hundred and fifty-two feet it takes to reach her, and he is not scared when he hears her singing in a tongue that he has not heard for quite some time.

The girl sparkles with the midnight rain. She does not appear to be cold, despite the delicate green fabric that clings to her frame. He gives her the jacket anyway, and when she continues to stare, he wraps it around her shoulders, just like his wife used to do for their children. 

"Hello, Michelle. It’s been a long time."

She blinks, her eyes the same colour as the lavender surrounding them, a conspiracy he had forgotten from long ago now occurring to him. 

"Hello, Ned. It’s good to see you."

He eases himself down to sit beside her in the path between the plants, ignoring the sudden dampness of his pyjamas. She ducks her head and hides her tears in the rain drops. 

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm waiting," she replies, turning back to the moon.

"For what?"

"To see his star."

And it is then that Ned spots what lies in Michelle’s lap; it’s simple but effective, and surely the last remains of his best friend, safe inside a golden urn.

It has been over two decades since Ned had said goodbye in this very field, and with each year that passed, he became more and more sure that he would never live to see his friends again. To look upon Michelle after all this time is a relief, to see how time has treated her so well with only the faintest dusting of grey to her hair, the gentle wrinkles that hint to a life spent laughing and smiling. 

He can’t imagine what he must look like to her, old and frail with hair long since lost, a hunched back and bowing knees completing the image of an elderly man.

Strangely, Ned does not feel the crashing wave of grief he had expected when he sees the ultimate fate of Peter Parker. He knows that Peter spent his final years with the woman he loved with everything he had, exploring worlds Ned cannot possibly imagine, and however he died he did so happy and content.

"I’m sorry we never made it back to you." Michelle leans into his side and he wraps an arm around her. “We had rather a lot of fun, and of course, time hurries on by when you’re enjoying yourself. We didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long.”

"I am not alone. I have never been alone." Ned runs his thumb over his wedding ring. “I have Betty, and Pippa and Henry are parents themselves now; I’ll be having my eighth grandchild next month. And I knew you two were up there somewhere, thinking of me as I am always thinking of you.”

Michelle sniffs, reaching to her other side to hand him a carefully wrapped parcel. "Peter spoke of you so often, it was like you were right there beside us. Just like when we were children."

Inside the cloth wrapping sits a book, torn and beaten and full to bursting. Ned opens the cover to see the still-familiar scrawl. _The Parker Adventures_ , it reads. _Chapter One - Meeting Michelle and Ned._

Wiping the tears that drip down his face, Ned lets the book close once more so he can hold it to his heart.

“What will you do, now?” he wonders aloud, “Where will you go?”

She points up to the clouds that are beginning to clear, violet eyes fixed in preparation. "I promised I would bring him home, so he could rest with his family. After that… I do not know. I never considered a life without him.”

“You always have a place here, my friend, should you want to stay.”

Michelle smiles, curling a little tighter around the urn. “What do you think, my darling? How’s about a quiet ending at Parker Farm?”

And when Michelle begins to laugh, Ned looks back up to the midnight sky and sees what had been twinkling in her eye - right beside his Aunt and Uncle, watching over them from up above, sits a brand new shining star.

It flares bright and full of joy, and Ned is overcome with the feeling that being surrounded by his friends once brought, one of too much laughter and the whisper of secrets, a serene comfort in a world so unjustly cruel.

“I think that was a yes.” Michelle sighs and finally lets herself rest, pressing her lips to the two gold bands huddled close together on her left hand as she begins to hum their song. “He will keep me safe until I can return to my home."

**Author's Note:**

> GET IT  
> BECAUSE PETER IS HER HOME  
> DO YOU GET IT  
> AHHHH
> 
> I... I am so sorry. But duuuuude am I so happy to post this. If you have any feedback, let me know in the comments!
> 
> @mjonesing on Tumblr as always


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